Leigh Peele has been in the fitness & improvement industry for well over a decade. She’s helped thousands of people across the world change their lives and has been featured in publications ranging from Women’s Health to The Guardian. Leigh’s goal is to be a junction between the lay population and research to help people achieve their goals in nutrition, mindset, and lifestyle. A revised and updated edition of her book, The Fat Loss Troubleshoot, will hit major book outlets, Audible, and Kindle in 2020.

Mike Domitrz:Welcome to the Respect Podcast. I’m your host, Mike Domitrz from mikespeaks.com, where we help organizations of all sizes, educational institutions, and the US military create a culture of respect. And respect is exactly what we discuss on this show, so let’s get started. And this week we’ve got Leigh Peele for you. Leigh is a writer, researcher, and mentor who helps people get to the best version of themselves with body composition or mindset. Leigh, thank you for joining us.

Leigh Peele:Thank you so much for having me, man.

Mike Domitrz:Absolutely. I want to dive right into that. What does that mean, the best version of themselves with body composition and mindset? Body composition, I think a fitness, strength training, cardio, heart work, mindset obviously speaks for itself. Is that what you’re referring to?

Leigh Peele:Yeah, ultimately, and it’s not about a collective agreed version. But essentially the best version for the individual and whatever that may be for the individual. And so, a lot of what I do is help people unpack not only how they get there technically and and physically, but also how to work with the emotional mindset aspects of it, what it is they want or how it is to get to what they want.

Mike Domitrz:And a lot of that does relate, well, sometimes not always, but sometimes can relate to body image.

Leigh Peele:Sure.

Mike Domitrz:And body acceptance. And right now, and in the media and entertainment, it’s being discussed more, but there’s still a lot of unhealthy examples of it out there. We see it in social media. Is it possible to coexist with people pushing the healthy feel, the healthy look, the healthy bodies that look a certain way, and body acceptance at the same time?

Leigh Peele:I absolutely believe in the utopia of that. I believe that they can coexist. I believe that it’s complicated or it’s complicated mostly by a lot of misunderstanding of the science meeting the social ability. And [inaudible 00:01:59] social science as well to that. But I think that one of the biggest issues in getting to that common ground and to getting into that realm of thinking is just really understanding how one achieves whatever it is they want to achieve in regards to their body composition, whatever it is that they want to be.

Leigh Peele:And I’m one of those people that truly celebrates autonomy and respecting that autonomy. So whatever it is you want to achieve, understanding the scientific ways, the strategy ways to go about achieving that. And then, ultimately, applying that and trying to have some sort of a success in that. I find that when we know how to get somewhere, when it stops all being a mystery, that the frustration aspects of it, they don’t wane because we still have procrastination and other things, but I find that it gets a lot less and therefore confusion and blame or self guilt or of these kinds of things go away or at least they’re are a lot less, or a lot more minimized.

Mike Domitrz:Let’s look back on it. Let’s say we have a lot of body image out there examples that are the 4% body fat, the 5% body fat. And that’s what we see out there. So how does somebody coexist in a world where fitness is shown as every muscles cut and defined air. There’s just this lean look to everybody in imagery for the ideal versions. How does that coexist with somebody who says, I’ll give you the example, my trainer used to say, I’d be working out with a friend of mine and we have opposite body images. So as far as body types, I’m the stick, and he is the shorter stout.

Leigh Peele:All right. He’s the bulldog, right?

Mike Domitrz:Yes, and so, our trainer would look at it, both of those [inaudible 00:03:52] I say, wow, you do that, that’s amazing. And he’d look at me and go, I can’t believe you’re able to pull that off because we’re the same age. And he’d go, look, you two, one of you is a penguin and one of you’s an ostrich. And you’re not going to become the other. So, how does somebody who’s a penguin or an ostrich, how do they compare to the one that looks like a tiger? You know what I mean? Like how do you avoid that comparison?

Leigh Peele:I think to some degree there’s a lot of mindset work that one has to do to understand the realistic… One of the things that I do with a lot of clients, a lot of how and what you just expressed, a lot of achieving a certain type of body composition is understanding your base. It’s understanding where you’re starting from height, genetics, to some degree, physical athletic ability, whether or not you have any pre existing conditions. All of these things play some sort of role into that. And I think being really honest about that is important, in saying this is what I can achieve, this is what I can’t achieve.

Leigh Peele:And one of the things that I have a lot of people do is fighters, for example, or people that perform or do things in weight classes have a lot of examples of their height and size and then their weight. And one of the things that I do is I say, okay, if you want to be X amount of lean or if you want to have this level of body fat or if you’re trying to hit this goal weight, I’ll shoot them a usually Google stacks of fighters or people that have made weight classes and I’m like, that is how low you would have to get, and this is how much body fat you would have to have, or this is how much muscle mass you would have to carry in order to achieve that kind of look. And by the way, you’re 5’11, and you’re 5’2, and this is the kind of variant difference of how people look. And sure, their height isn’t always a predictor of an exact type of look, but it can be one for the most part.

Leigh Peele:So I get really real with them and I get very honest, and I have them dig deep into what it is they think they want and what it is they think they don’t want, because there’s something wrong with the person that has 4%. There’s nothing wrong with the person who, to them, it comes incredibly easy and it’s just their regular rhythm of life, or the person that worked really hard for it. But there’s also nothing wrong with the person that has 20% either. And when we look at the epidemiology research and we look at correlations versus causation of what our health problems are and where that actually lives, it’s a complex, murky gray water. It is not, hey, guess what? Being as low body fat as possible means you’re healthy.

Leigh Peele:There’s a big gray there. There’s a lot of arguments to having a little extra body fat or a little weight on you, especially if you are going through some sort of event, some sort of acute illness event in which you were sick. So I try to just keep it honest, I keep it real and I really allow the individual, or I work very hard to allow the individual, to shut off the Pinterest pages or the Instagram influencers or the whatever it is that they’ve been seeing for a bit, and focus in zoom in, what do you really want? Okay, this is what’s possible for you. Because I find that it’s the worst when people are in that place of comparison, when they are the penguin trying to be the ostrich or the other way around, and not understanding where it is they’re coming from, but celebrating the beauty of the space that they’re in.

Mike Domitrz:Yeah, well, I think that’s the challenge, especially as you age. For example, I was a swimmer growing up, not anything special, but I also had a body-build that had a very high metabolism. So I could literally, and we were actually assessed on what we were eating at the time, I could eat eight to 10,000 calories a day and have 4% body fat. Now, we were working out four to five hours a day, two hours practice in the morning, two hours in the afternoon plus weights and running. And so, you had this incredible work ethic that was built with that.

Mike Domitrz:But as you age, you stop that level of activity. You’re not going to live at five hours of training a day, not most people with family and everything. There are exceptions to that, of course. And you also slow down. And so, it’s the comparison of yourself, of your past self, that can beat yourself up, too. And I, recently, as an example, a year ago, I went to a very high fat diet for about a month. The results were amazing as far as my body. It was the first time I could see definition back in my abs that I hadn’t seen in forever, but I didn’t enjoy the way it felt. I didn’t like the things that I had to… And I’ve had to realize I don’t want to… If that’s what it takes, I’m okay not being there.

Leigh Peele:Yeah. Yeah, and I think a lot of people that I’ll work with, we’ll talk about the past and what worked for them because a lot of what I do is… I could turn anyone into a lab rat and get them to achieve whatever body composition we wanted to achieve. If their autonomy was completely robbed and I could just control everything they did, it’s a cinch. It really is. It’s when you involve the free living society, it’s when you involve the world. And a lot of what I hope people do is strategy of it.

Leigh Peele:And like you said, maybe I can achieve X, Y, and Z with a certain type of diet or even a certain type of training program or what have you, but if it’s not something that’s going to fit into your life, if it doesn’t fit into your world… I always equate people, I’m like, it’s like trying to marry or date someone that it just doesn’t work and you’re trying to force it and you’re trying to make it work, but it just doesn’t work. And ultimately, something’s got to give. And all of it’s got to be at the end of it is resentment in hurt feelings.

Leigh Peele:And the same, the absolute same thing exists with food and with training programs. So strategy and the method of what it is, for some people it’s moving a little more in a daily set. For others, it’s working with the timing of meal intake. And ultimately, it’s also being really honest about what that takes, having that kind of God for you and moving from that type of activity level, and then not. And the ability to eat pretty much, wow, and anything you could want. Yeah, I’ve trained swimmers and it’s incredible what they can pound in. It’s almost angering. It’s angering for most people to see it from the side, but it’s a lot of work. It’s an insane amount of work.

Leigh Peele:So to go from that and to being like, oh, okay, well, the best I could do now is hopefully some sort of low carb or keto manipulation strategy. It doesn’t work. You have to find some sort of balance or middle between that and figure out the strategy of what does work, and ultimately, what it is you want. If you even want a certain low body fat and how much that’s even being true to you.

Mike Domitrz:Right, exactly. And I always like to word, when people say what do you want, for me, I like to say vibrancy because it’s the holistic. For me, it sounds holistic versus just strength. If you have strength but your heart’s not healthy, what good is that?

Leigh Peele:I totally agree, yeah.

Mike Domitrz:Vibrancy, in theory, should be you have the strength, you’re taking care of the heart, you’re taking care of the lungs, ideally. Now, a lot of this, as you’ve brought up, does come back to food. Why do you think people have such struggles with their relationship with food? Is there an issue of respect in there in how we view food?

Leigh Peele:That could be a whole podcast. It could be the whole 25 right there. It’s hard when we moved from… And I think that I really love to look at the social view of over time and how we’ve spanned things. So we moved from periods of time, and it wasn’t that long ago that food was rationed, food was not available for all of it. And there are places in the world in which that is absolutely still the case, but we move from a place in which that we have very little food available or we have to ration food. And a giant Steinbeck novel is not as far away as we realized that it is, to moving to a place in which we have… I have a friend that that visits us from Australia, and she looks at our milk section in our grocery stores and she’s like, my God, you have so much milk. I don’t even understand. Why would anyone need all this milk? We have all this availability, palpability, specialized tastes.

Leigh Peele:I’m not one that demonizes food in any way, shape or form. I’m one that believes that life is short and we should eat to the largest area of our health that we can, but also the largest area of enjoyment. And I think it’s just really, really hard when you have all of these emotional issues to unpack, health issues to unpack. We have all of these circumstances in life that need coping and that need aid and food. It’s a great coping mechanism. It is a great way to bring some sort of joy and fulfillment into your day. And it’s also a necessity. We need it. It’s energy we need in our bodies.

Leigh Peele:And you mix that with palpability and it can start to get complicated because we move from enjoying something and it fulfilling us, to maybe abusing it or enjoying it too much, and then it creates a very complicated relationship with that item. And the thing that makes it different from alcohol or too many sex partners or any other addiction type issue, technology, the thing that’s different about that is we have to have food. And so, a lot of what I try to do is try to help people have a healthy relationship with that food and try to have a better understanding of what it is that works for their lives and what it is that doesn’t.

Mike Domitrz:There’s one that I think a lot of us struggle with out there, and that is sugar. And then, if we cut the sugar, then suddenly salt is what we want. [crosstalk 00:13:24]. I have noticed that in myself. If I cut sugar, suddenly chips are really, really good even though I wasn’t wanting chips before, so it’s this battle of salt and sugar. What’s the mindset shift that’s needed? What are skills we can take into that to help us shift the mindset? Because I know it’s a mindset issue. I’ve had friends who can look at it and go it’s like poison to them. And so, they don’t want it anymore, where they used to want it. I’m like, how do you get to that place where you see it and it looks like poison. I’ve tried to play the game with my mind, see it as poison. I don’t. So I’m curious, what does somebody do to get there?

Leigh Peele:Yeah, for me, and this isn’t to cut on anyone who utilizes this tactic or whatnot, I think it’s comparable to some degree that to abstinence, and certain other things in addiction research. Essentially, it’s accessing obsessive compulsive thoughts. That’s what we’re doing, and the relay of desires and palpability fulfillment. That’s what it is that we’re doing. So I am not one to do an all or nothing. There are period of absence that you can use if you’re trying to shake up habit change or reintroduce things. But what I try and do with my clients and what I try to do with myself, I had periods of times in which that all I wanted to eat was sugar or all I wanted to eat was certain things. But I think it’s ultimately, and I really do think this is true, I think that it is ultimately believing in the desire and the ability of wanting to be healthy and wanting to live, and wanting to live a long time and be healthy in that manner and have a balanced diet.

Leigh Peele:But the demonization that we have of sugar or of, for vegans, it can be meat and I’m a vegetarian, by the way, so that’s not a criticism, or for this group, it can be X. Fats bad here and carbs are bad there, sugar’s bad there. I don’t believe in a demonization of it. From a physiological standpoint, for example, sugar is amazingly efficient. It’s an amazingly efficient fuel source. We need energy and it’s an incredible, efficient fuel source. I don’t think that it’s wrong that we ever crave it or we ever utilize it. It’s just how we work it in and how we utilize it.

Leigh Peele:And I think when you make your peace with what it all does, when you understand it from even a biochemistry aspect and you get what it all takes place for and that, okay, you need your vegetables and you need your proteins to do this repair and you need these things to provide this fuel and this source. And when you really look at it for its individual thing, you can step back and be like, okay, fine, none of it’s off limits. None of it’s taboo anymore. I can have it all. It’s all in front of me. The grocery store is 24/7, and I can have it all and do it all.

Leigh Peele:Now, that it’s not some sort of taboo rebellious system, that much happens to a 14 year old kid when you tell them they can’t drink or smoke. Once it’s done, it’s just this thing that it is, what again, do you really want? And I’ve had clients and I’m like, go ahead, have your calories in a whole day. Go ahead. Have it all in cookies, do it. Have it all on cake. Do it. I tell them do it for a week, do it. They eventually are like, yeah, no, I want some protein. Yeah, no, I want some vegetables. I really do. And I think the hardest person is the individual that has never truly enjoyed vegetables or that has never truly enjoyed the other food. That is the worst person, the hardest person to work with.

Leigh Peele:And then it’s for them, I really try to help them indulge in testing their palette and retesting their palette, and retrying these types of foods and trying them first battered and fried, and then trying them sauteed and heavy butter and salt, and moving it down into where they can take a bite of a red pepper or raw broccoli, and they’re like, no, okay, I’m starting to actually like it. You have to like the food. You have to like it. And sometimes, it means starting off with it covered in bread and fried and with ketchup. And it moves down in that way.

Leigh Peele:So I really try to just be like, go for it. Go into the whole barrel of food sin that you absolutely can, just dive in. Just do your thing. Understanding your activity level and then try to not gain any sort of fat mass while doing that. You can maintain body weight on 2000 calories of Twinkies. You can. It doesn’t feel good, but you can do it. And eventually, you’re going to decide on your own that you don’t want that anymore and that there’s something to it.

Leigh Peele:And I find that very liberating. I do. I find it very liberating, instead of making it this taboo thing where we have, oh, your gut is going to eat you if you do X, Y, and Z. Yeah, well, it doesn’t work a lot in other research, in healthy behavior. I don’t see it working in food, shame and robbing of autonomy and making people feel bad and putting tax on. It’s an idea. I’m not saying it’s not an idea, but it’s not one I’ve found that’s worked.

Mike Domitrz:All right, first of all, I love the phrase food sin. That was great. All right, so now, if somebody is listening, what are some specific steps I can take to feel better about my food choices and my body of any size? And I think that’s a struggle for a lot of people, and it doesn’t matter which end of the spectrum you’re at. I said that I’m very thin. I’m that sort of stick build. And for men, that’s not the epitome that society says. But I can still love my body, but some people are like, no, I can’t because that doesn’t look… Or for some people are going, but I’m way larger than the scale says I should be, than society says I should be. So how do people learn to love their bodies at any size?

Leigh Peele:I am such a person that comes from the school of the emperor’s new clothes. That was one of my favorite books growing up, and I’m always the person that’s like, oh, everyone’s agreeing with this. And it’s like, the guy’s not wearing any clothes. He’s naked. That is such of my mindset. So for me, I think that there is a degree in which that you have to go, sometimes society isn’t necessarily right about things. And we have to allow ourselves to agree that, while it takes a village and why I am a believer in sociality and believing a social creature, we do have to shut that off a little bit because people are really wrapped up in what it is that they want and what it is that they believe is right. And it really has nothing to do with you.

Leigh Peele:And the only level of societal creatures I think that we should really agree to being is respectful and autonomous appreciation societal creatures. Meaning we don’t go into the movie theater and we don’t scream fire and we don’t try to hurt someone. And we do the best we can to be the manneristic neighbor. Everything else though, keeping up with the Jones’s and the societal aim of, well, this is the right body fat and this is the kind of person you should look like, and this is the type of style that you have to have. I’m not a subscriber to that kind of mentality. So ultimately, I think you really have to turn to yourself and you have to just really analyze who you are and why you are who you are.

Leigh Peele:Why do you like the things that you like? Why are your role models the role models you have? How much of that is influenced by something you think that you should like versus something you really do like? There’s a lot of times that I’ll be talking to a client or we’ll be working out something and I go back to this… There’s a scene in a movie, it’s a romcom. It’s Runaway Bride with Julia Roberts and Richard Gere. It seems like it should have no deep life lessons whatsoever. But the whole point of the movie is that she doesn’t know who she is. She doesn’t even know what kind of egg she likes. She doesn’t have any sort of understanding of who she is. Everything has been manipulated from one relationship to the next. And that’s why she keeps not marrying people and running away.

Leigh Peele:And I asked them in a roundabout way, I’m like, what kind of eggs do you like? What do you like? What is it that you really enjoy? What is it that you buy [inaudible 00:21:16]? And by the end of a lot of our “body composition work,” what people really end up finding is themselves in it. And the body lines up where it’s supposed to. I’m not saying it doesn’t take strategy and it doesn’t take hard work, but once you understand who you are and what you like, it’s just a matter of point and shoot. It becomes college. It becomes achieving a goal. It just simply becomes putting one foot in front of the other and doing the things that you need to do because now, you’re not confused. It’s not a convoluted situation. You’re not quite sure if you’re battling this because you want to have a dress outfit for a high school reunion. Or if you’re trying to keep up with your friend Bob who’s like, hey, yeah, looking a little lean there. It’s nothing about that anymore. The voices, everybody else’s opinions, they just disappear.

Mike Domitrz:Well, that makes sense. What do you think along those lines is… What you’re pretty much saying is take out the noise because that’s getting into our head. It’s like porn. I’ve talked to parents about this. If your kid had never seen porn, and the first time they’re naked with a partner in a mature, healthy situation, all they’re going to be doing is admiring that naked body in front of them, every inch of it, every ounce of it. It’s the greatest gift ever. They’re going to be thinking this is awesome. If they’d been watching porn though for three years, they’re judging that same naked body based on what they thought the naked body should look like. They’re judging their own body based on what the body should look like, instead of being in the moment with the bodies that are. And so, I think what you’re describing is dead on exactly what that with food body [crosstalk 00:00:22:47]. It’s body image porn, it’s food porn. We hear food porn before. So what do you think are the most harmful things you see people do in the pursuit of body composition?

Leigh Peele:I think there’s some degree. You just nailed it right there. We’re watching too much porn. We’re watching too much porn in our Instagram feed and things like that. It’s the comparison is the thief of joy. And it’s not that I’m not someone, I want to make it clear, I help people achieve really amazing goals and even really high and complicated goals, from bodybuilding trainers that do stage competitions to fighters that have to make weight. But ultimately, it’s about their decision. It’s about it being, it’s your decision, it’s your dream, it’s your goal. That’s the point. So it’s the comparison game and it’s allowing your neighbor’s chatter, be it a Facebook friend on social media or literally next door.

Leigh Peele:And it always gets me when people will be like, oh, so-and-so made this comment at me today. They made a comment about my body or a client will say that or a friend will say that in general. So-and-so said I was looking X, Y and Z. I am just not the person to care. In fact, when someone says stuff like that, I’m just like, you’re rude. That’s just rude. It’s just rude. It’s a rude thing to do. Who does that? I’m always surprised that people do that, and I’m certainly surprised that people allow it to affect them because the first thing I think when you do something like that, you’re rude. So I don’t really care what you think because you’re a rude person. And I think having just a lot of self efficacy and a lot of belief in yourself and ability is really important. So let go of the comparison. Yeah, let go of the chatter and certainly put down the body porn.

Mike Domitrz:Yeah, absolutely. So a lot of people on that journey of trying to figure out their health, and myself included, read a lot of books and then we follow this book and then that book. What about the people who have that shelf of books? Maybe you’ve left them more confused. For me, I find it interesting. I feel like I’m learning from each one. It’s not one or nothing, but I feel like I’m learning with each one. But what about those who feel confused? Which plan am I supposed to be on based on the books?

Leigh Peele:Yeah, it’s interesting you say that because I’m someone that because the level I am with my education of energy and the biology and the chemistry of how everything works in the body, I can read a, if you will, bad diet book and take something good from it because a lot of what even bad diet books can teach us has to do with how free living society needs things to work. And there can be a lot of strategy and applicable things and knowledge to take away from that. But I’m coming at it with a very skeptical and critical eye.

Leigh Peele:And generally speaking, I’ll be honest with you, that you’d be hard pressed to find me reading any sort of diet books these days. I just mostly read studies. But I think with the average person reading diet books, I think that the thing that’s really hard and really scary for them, one tells them energy doesn’t matter. One tells them calories don’t matter. One tells them carbs is bad. Another tells them that wheat is going to destroy their gut. The other tells them that fat is going to clog their arteries. You can’t really win.

Leigh Peele:And I’ve always told people it’s great to read and it’s great to try to improve our knowledge, but when it comes to the body, it is more of a technical process. It can be emotional, but it’s more like trying to read a bunch of books on how to build an engine or how to get an engine to run. There are many ways to go about a process like that, but it’s ultimately a very technical thing. It’s a very technical process and you really want, in my opinion, the best diet book you can ever have is usually a textbook. I tell people if you really want to understand diet and training and metabolism, read the advanced nutrition and metabolism textbook that is released at your local college. It’s used, you can get it for $30 and it’s one of the best books you can ever read on a diet.

Leigh Peele:And I think it’s understanding the technical, energy, thermodynamics, the stuff that makes the process of our bodies work. That’s not changing. Now, you might have bad genes, you might have a varying amount from day to day of how much energy you use. There’s no static to it. It’s never a static motion. It’s always an evolving thing, but ultimately, energy is not destroyed. It’s just all around us. It transfers from one thing to the next. You consume it, you expel it. That’s just not changing. And if you can embrace that concept and just try to work the strategies of life, and it doesn’t matter if you use keto or paleo or low carb or high carb or vegetarian or whatever, it doesn’t really matter. But you’ve got to believe in the energy aspect of it and you’ve got to believe in the fact that the best shot you have is trying to keep the energy at the forefront first, and then the strategy of how it works in your life second.

Mike Domitrz:We’re going to pause. I’m going to pause there just due to time. You have a book. So I can see some people going wait, isn’t she an author? How does your book not add to that noise?

Leigh Peele:It does that. And technically, just for the record, there is an ebook, but my major book is dropping like a year or so from now. I have an ebook but I have that. But yeah, my goal is not to create any sort of dogmatic or fear-based type of nutritional lifestyle. My goal is to help people really achieve what it is they want to achieve by addressing the science first, addressing the science of what it is that we have to do in order to manipulate body composition, whatever direction that may be, your choice, your autonomy.

Leigh Peele:And then, trying to weed out the noise and say this is why these things work. Or this is why this works. I don’t have an agenda. I don’t have a paleo cauliflower pizza that I’m tied to in a company that I’m trying to sell. I’m not shilling for sugar either. I’m not anti the dairy organization, I’m just trying to put out the best of literature review in science research that I can and try to help people achieve the body composition that they can ultimately without hating themselves in the morning, or being frustrated, or not being able to interact with their friends or family, or not knowing what to do because they have to cut X, Y, and Z out and never eat it again. Or if they need to do that, because that’s the only way they’re going to survive, that they at least understand that they are calling that shot.

Mike Domitrz:Right.

Leigh Peele:It’s just ultimately giving people the power back and that’s what I think is really important.

Mike Domitrz:Love it. And I thank you so much for sharing all your brilliance with us today. Such a great conversation. Who knew we’d be talking about body composition porn and food porn.

Leigh Peele:Absolutely.

Mike Domitrz:So thank you so much, Leigh. Appreciate it.

Leigh Peele:Thank you for having me.

Mike Domitrz:Absolutely. For all of our listeners, you can find Leigh at leighpeele.com. That’s Leigh, as in L-E-I-G-H. Peele, as in P-E-E-L-E.com. So that’ll all be in the show notes also. So for all of our listeners, you know what’s coming up next. That is question of the week. Before I answer this week’s question of the week, I’d love to ask you a question, would you please subscribe to this podcast, the Respect Podcast with Mike Domitrz? By subscribing, you can make a huge impact. Now, you might be wondering, Mike, how does my subscribing to your podcast make a huge impact? Well, here’s how.

Mike Domitrz:For every person that subscribes, it raises the rankings of the show in the search engines. So for people who care about respect, like yourself, when they’re doing a search for podcast, they’re more likely to find this show, thus providing an awesome opportunity for us to spread more respect around this world. And all you do is hit subscribe under your podcast. Plus the second benefit is, by subscribing, you automatically get every episode right into your phone or whatever device you’re listening to the podcast on. It happens automatically. So subscribing also makes your life easier. Now, let’s get into this week’s question of the week. Oh, and by the way, you can always ask your questions of the week by joining us on Facebook and our discussion group. It’s called the Respect Podcast Discussion Group. Go there on Facebook and ask whatever questions you would like me to answer and/or address in this segment of the show. And then listen to each episode to find out when your question is included.

Mike Domitrz:This week’s question is, Mike, what if I’m in the heat of the moment and I want to stop? And my partner is like, we can’t stop. I can’t control myself right now. What do I do? Well, if that person says, I can’t control myself, know that that’s not your responsibility to fix them or whatever they are struggling with in that moment. That’s their situation. So if they’re going, I can’t control myself, you need to be able to say out loud, well, that’s not my fault or my problem to solve. You need to take care of that and now you don’t need me to do that. So that you know that you’re not responsible for pleasing them, for making them happy. That’s not your responsibility in that moment.

Mike Domitrz:You need to be able to honor your boundaries. You need to respect yourself and respect the other person. And saying no to someone is not disrespecting them at all. In fact, it’s respecting them because you’re being honest because you don’t want to do this. And that’s super important to understand. Do you know what I would love? I would love to hear your answer to this week’s question of the week. So would you please answer what your answer would have been if you were asked that question today on the show. All you do is go to our Facebook page. We have a special group where we have these discussions called the Respect Podcast Discussion Group, the Respect Podcast Discussion Group.

Mike Domitrz:And share with us what would your answer have been to this week’s question of the week, and if take a moment, post us a new question for future episodes. What question would you like to hear me answer on an upcoming episode? That’s all done on Facebook in our special group, which is the Respect Podcast Discussion Group. Can’t wait to see you there. Thank you for joining us in this episode of the Respect Podcast, exploring work, love and life. And this episode, like every episode, is brought to you by our organization, the Center for Respect, which you can find it, centerforrespect.com. And of course, you can find me, your host, Mike Domitrz at mikespeaks.com. Thank you so much for joining us.